On my desk is a large file of memos and other documents from the Department of Environmental Protection. Individually there are no smoking guns, but taken as a whole you can watch the slow-motion dismantling of Florida’s environmental watchdog, reduced from a pit-bull to a toy poodle. The bite is gone, all that’s left is the yap.

The Dan A. Hughes Company of Beeville, Texas is an oil company with profit on its mind and they managed to extract a permit from the now well-tamed DEP to conduct exploratory drilling next door to protected Florida Panther habitat. That the big cats are threatened with extinction doesn’t matter when there’s fracking to be done. The DEP pounced upon them for unpermitted operations in Corkscrew Swamp, a breeding ground for protected Wood Storks and gave them a resounding slap on the wrist to the tune of a $25,000 fine. I bet that hurt! Of course the consent order redacts exactly what they were doing on grounds it was a trade secret, but the description fits one thing: fracking.

Studies of fracking sites in Texas, Pennsylvania and Wyoming found elevated levels of arsenic in the groundwater, which is just what the doctor ordered for Florida’s aquifers. The effect upon the water supply for Miami, or Naples or Fort Myers? Who cares? We won’t mention the earthquakes. The good folks in the Marco Island area found out that there’s little point in protesting a year ago.

For its part, the DEP is playing coy with the Tampa Times, refusing to discuss its oil permitting processes. In fact, the DEP is playing it coy across the board. This is what you’d expect from a state department with Scott-picked lapdog leadership that carefully got rid of any attorney who attempted to move against polluters.

The point is that the DEP has been fully aware of Hughes’ activities since last December but has done nothing and, to use one report’s language, “parroted back” the statements of Hughes that they were not fracking. It is interesting that when Hughes admitted they were doing exploratory work, the method used, as described by them, could be a dictionary definition of fracking.

Given this situation, one might be forgiven for finding all the crocodile tears over Florida’s springs, shed by the Governor, a bit confusing. He has asked for big bucks in the budget to clean these water bodies up, yet, next to the Florida Panther’s last stand, the watchdog that would oversee such protective work, one assumes, is looking the other way while fracking booms along. Could there be a move to bottle Florida spring water by one of his pals coming soon?

For those of us who remember the old Florida, we realize how wrong this is. We can remember when rivers were so clear and pure you could see to the bottom. I can remember when you could swim underwater at Shell Point and see for thirty feet. Today the water is a filthy brown and the e-coli count is such that you don’t want to swim there.

The filthying of Florida continues. If that filthying includes pumping water mixed with arsenic and Lord-knows-what else (trade secret, you know) into the rocks that hold the aquifer, we are watching Paradise Lost. Remember, we elected the people who have let this happen. We can un-elect them if it matters.